Document Missing: On Methodology (text, voice, and body)
03.10.2023–02.11.2023
Archaeology of Resistance, ŠKUC Gallery, Ljubljana, in the frame of 29. International Festival of Contemporary Arts – City of Women / Mesto Žensk, curated by Iva Kovač (traveling to Podroom Gallery, Cultural Centre of Belgrade, 2024). Photo: Matic Pandel.
Document Missing is an ongoing research project that began in 2014. It focuses on the forms, narratives, and aesthetics of resistance strategies and political actions of women in Macedonia during the first half of the 20th century, in relation to today’s forms of resistance.
As a primary source, I use transcribed and archived oral testimonies from participants and eyewitnesses involved in the emancipatory and liberation movements in Macedonia. These testimonies were collected and institutionally preserved after WWII.
This installation is a fragment from an exhibition developed in dialogue with historian Ivana Hadzievska and ethnologist and activist Jana Kocevska. They invited me to join the research team focusing on the forgotten magazine Makedonka, published in the Macedonian language between 1944 and 1952, as the official organ of the Women’s Antifascist Front of Macedonia—part of the broader Women’s Antifascist Front of Yugoslavia, established on December 6, 1942. My research focused specifically on the first issue of Makedonka, published under challenging conditions on November 7, 1944. This led me to reflect on what it means to create and edit emancipatory content, and to consider the key terms that shape such a process. Starting from this point, I turned toward my own methodology and identified three essential elements tied to my understanding of performance and performativity: text, voice, and body.
Archetype Open Form, 2022
Cyrillic Macedonian typography; 59 letters, numbers, and punctuation marks.
Materials: Metal, plastic, pigment, and graphite.
Collaborators: Martin Krstevski (metal), Iliana Petrushevska (graphic preparation), Ivan Peshevski (technical preparation), Nebojsha Gelevski-Bane (font development).
Archetype Open Form is the result of my ongoing interest in letters and text as primary visual elements. This work was inspired by Josef Albers’s typeface Architype Albers (1926–1931), which is based on basic geometric forms (square, triangle, and circle), and by Oskar and Zofia Hansen’s theory of Open Form (1959).
In developing this typeface, I removed all vertical and horizontal lines—symbols of rigid hierarchies—and created a system composed solely of diagonal lines, circles, and semicircles. This allowed me to explore the dualities of visibility/invisibility and legibility/illegibility. A word or sentence written in this typeface might initially appear as an abstract drawing, echoing Hansen’s visual interpretation of Open Form theory.
The act of reading becomes a performative process for the viewer: a decoding of what is hidden and what is revealed.
Archetype Open Form exists only in Macedonian and English—the two primary languages of my artistic practice. As part of this installation, the alphabet is displayed as a reminder of a significant historical moment: when the Macedonian language was declared the official language of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia on August 2, 1944, during the first plenary session of ASNOM (Anti-Fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia.
It also draws attention to the challenges faced by Makedonka’s first editor-in-chief, Veselinka Malinska, as she attempted to produce content in her native language amid numerous obstacles at the end of WWII: an unstandardized language, an inexperienced writing team, a shortage of printing paper, and the need to use Serbian and Bulgarian letterpress blocks as substitutes.
Document Missing: Performance no. 12 (Makedonka – emancipation, meaning, and desire), 2022/23
Garment: Woollen felt, cotton thread, and plastic.
Collaborators: Dragan Hristov (costume), Abdula Mustafa (cap).
Triptych: Series of photographs, inkjet print on acid-free paper, 100 × 70 cm each.
Photography: Žarko Čulić.
This particular costume is inspired by the basic partisan shirt and cap. It is part of a series of garments I began creating in 2022 as an extension of my performance practice. Each piece is based on a rectangular form, which I treat as a surface upon which words and meanings can be embroidered, painted, or attached—extracted directly from the text I perform.